Transforming Working-Class Identity in Post-War Britain: the Perspective of Ferdinand Zweig

Abstract

This article examines the post-war transformation of the British working-class identity through the sociological perspective of Ferdinand Zweig. It explores how economic prosperity, consumer culture and social mobility reshaped the values, aspirations and sense of identity of the working class in the 1950s and 1960s. F. Zweig’s concept of embourgeoisement serves as the central analytical framework, showing how working-class communities gradually adopted the lifestyles and outlooks of the middle class. The study highlights the erosion of class solidarity, the declining influence of trade unions and the rise of individualism and material aspiration as defining features of the new social order. It also considers the changing position of women within the working class, focusing on their growing participation in the labour market and the continuing presence of traditional domestic expectations. Drawing on F. Zweig’s principal works The British Worker, The Worker in an Affluent Society and Women’s Life and Labour, the article situates the transformation of working-class identity within the wider processes of modernisation and cultural change in post-war Britain.